It was, even by the dispiriting standards of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, a futile concept: a peace conference without either of the warring parties. On January 15th diplomats from more than 70 countries flew to Paris for a summit against which Israeli officials had been inveighing for weeks.
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Trump could be Israel's worst nightmare
It was a valedictory speech, irrelevant in a few weeks, but John Kerry’s much-anticipated remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were still a remarkable indictment. In a 75-minute address at the State Department on Wednesday, the secretary of state outlined a long list of reasons why the two-state solution was on its deathbed, and defended last week’s abstention from a controversial Security Council vote on Israeli settlements. He laid most of the blame on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government.
Read MoreThe New Culture War in Israel
By August it had become a familiar scene: A woman standing on a Mediterranean beach is stopped by authorities, who proceed to ask her to change her clothes lest she offend her fellow beachgoers. Except this wasn’t France, where several municipalities recently tried to ban the burkini, a full-body swimsuit worn by some conservative Muslim women, but Israel. And the woman, singer and former reality-show star Hanna Goor, who was in town for a music festival in nearby Ashdod, wasn’t being asked by authorities to remove a burkini. Quite the opposite.
Read MoreWhy Israel Loves Donald Trump
This might be the most surprising poll from a wild, unpredictable 2016 campaign: One in four Israeli Jews would vote for Donald Trump.
Read MoreNetanyahu, circus ringmaster of the Israeli right
Young men, hundreds of them, are holed up in a house of worship, a squat building carved from Jerusalem’s famous limestone. The worshippers have stockpiled explosives inside, they say, to stop Israeli soldiers from changing the decades-old status quo at the site.
Read MoreCan anyone prevent a third intifada?
A pair of bodies on the pavement, covered in blood-spattered white sheets. Dozens of police officers sweeping through Jabal al-Mukaber, a rough neighborhood in East Jerusalem, searching cars and clashing with local youth. An emergency cabinet meeting to discuss home demolitions and closing the Palestinian parts of Israel’s “eternally reunited” capital to traffic.
Read MoreThe age of the lone wolf intifada
A small crowd stands outside a synagogue, chanting “death to terrorists” and “revenge,” hours after two Palestinian men armed with knives, axes and a gun hacked worshippers to death. Four bodies are still inside, still wrapped in their bloodied prayer shawls. “This happened because we talk with terrorists,” says an angry mourner. “We can’t have peace while we allow terrorists to live in Jerusalem.”
Read MoreThe death of sympathy
Pro-war demonstrators stand behind a police barricade in Tel Aviv, chanting, "Gaza is a graveyard." An elderly woman pushes a cart of groceries down the street in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and asks a reporter, "Jewish or Arab? Because I won't talk to Arabs." A man in Sderot, a town that lies less than a mile from Gaza, looks up as an Israeli plane, en route to the Hamas-ruled territory, drops a blizzard of leaflets over the town. "I hope that's not all we're dropping," he says.
Read MoreIs this Hamas' last war?
Down in the south there is a feeling of déjà vu: Israeli jets have dropped thousands of tons of bombs on Gaza, hundreds of rockets have been launched into Israel and troops are amassing along the border ahead of a possible ground invasion.
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